Linear Unthinking
by VirginiaSnap
Summary: Her mother thought she was dumb and her father was disappointed in her, her peers did not take her seriously, and her own time nearly rejected her; however, Rosalind Lutece was a woman who would not turn over her brain and its workings so easily to the call of society's limitations.


**Author's Note: **Okay, so this whole thing is probably going to be long and drawn out. But its sort of my running project to just write some history for a character who, by game standards, has one but is largely unspecified. Anyway, enjoy it. Going to be skipping over events in game play just so I'm not rehashing anything.

* * *

_Jean-Marc Lutèce was born some place near Tours in the middle-of-nowhere, France. Born nothing more than a farmer caught in the métayage system, he bent his back and dreamed of much greater things that his simpleton mind could hope to achieve. Upon reaching 16 years of age, he simply left his home and came to England where he taught himself the language and he taught himself the trade of wood-working. And when my father grew tired of his 14 years frittered away in South Hampton, he stowed away on a ship to the new world, lost the accent in his name, and lost his stomach, churning on a ship for several weeks. _

_He brought nothing with him, yet he was able to promptly fool my Grandfather into thinking that he was a somebody with a future and with a bloodline. Without a penny in his pocket, he married my mother, Louise Endicott. He immediately took to the socialite class, despite contributing nothing. He merely lived, corroding himself into place so he became rusted against Endicott's fortunes._

_I was born of this imported father and Brahmin mother in Boston, Massachusetts. November 8__th__, 1871. The Civil War was still heavy in American politics and the South was still trying to stand back on shaky feet. The harbor brought in ships. Industry poured water into the bay where revolutionaries had once dumped tea, turning the water to a brown mess. I was born in the morning cold with a jaw that was too short for me. _

Rosalind Lutece tried to hurry home as fast as she could every day after school, though, her short legs and clumsy feet could only carry her so quickly. She had only just come into the world of the structured classroom for her weary parents had grown tired of tutor after tutor telling them that they simply could not work with such an ornery little girl. She did not speak. In fact she had not spoken a word until she was almost 4 years old and until then her parents always feared that their daughter might be a feeble-minded Moron. Even when she had started talking, they still were quite unsure, for their daughter said the oddest things.

Rosalind grew up buried in books, the one at the back of the classroom, not because she was shy, but because it was back there that the teachers did not bother to call on her and disrupt her reading. While other children read picture books, she took encyclopedia volumes from her father's library.

"That book is too difficult for you to read," A reluctant mother had said.

Rosalind had put her nose in the air, "If I can read a children's book, I can read an adults book. There are no more letters in here than what are in mine."

"But there are greater _ideas_."

Greater ideas then what she knew of. She would not be so naive to them, if her parents would simply let her read. Why did her age have to dictate how much she knew or what she was supposed to know?

The rush of the city clogged her ears as she tried to take the alleyways back home. They were quieter. She enjoyed the quiet. Rather more, she enjoyed the lack of people to see her when she was occasionally forced to wear her braces out in public. As much as she hated having to have a tutor buzzing around her head, trying to teach her about histories and literatures suitable for a ten year old, there was no one there to see her when she did wear it. When the tutoring failed, every one of her new classmates saw the machinery. Everyone saw the length of leather around her head, the rubber attaching it to the wire crib behind her teeth. Although she did not say a word, the hum of discomfort when the doctors chose the times it was to be worn was a constant.

She tried to drown out the other, almost overpowering noises around her but focusing on the sound of her feet. Clutching her book against her chest, she held her head down and watched the tip of her pointed shoes dip into her view from under the fabric waves of her pale yellow dress. Yellow wasn't her color and she knew it all too well. She had heard the other girls talk about how it made her pale, freckled skin look even paler. How much time she spent with her books didn't help her situation, neither did her Irish genes. A stray strand of sienna red hair flopped into her face and with an aggravated whistle through her braces she set it back into place. If even her hair was going to get in her way… so help her…

She let her hand fall back to the book she was carrying and in that instant she almost ran into something that had placed itself in her way. She raised her blue eyes up with an agitated look only too feel what little color was at her face leave it. Talbot Ridley was standing before her. He was the tallest kid in her class and had appointed himself as the most intelligent as well. His position, however, had been sorely compromised several days earlier, when Rosalind had corrected him publically in front of their school mates. They had butted heads quite often before, but usually she had just walked away. Talbot had brought a friend along today, though his name the girl couldn't remember, nor did she care to.

Rosalind bowed her head in a curt hello. She had yet to speak a word today, lest her tongue catch on the wiring causing her to lisp.

"What's the big idea coming down _my_ alley way?"

It wasn't his alleyway. He wasn't the mayor of the city or even remotely related to the mayor. She would have informed him of this has the brace not been at her head today. She always corrected people's mistakes, yet today was the day where she said nothing. Instead of looking at Talbot or his friend, her eyes were carefully trying to find a path around them and back on her original track towards her home.

"Well? What is it?" Talbot said, waiting for an answer, his hat pulled down over his scruffy, light brown hair.

Rosalind rolled her eyes, still hesitant to speak. If this classmate of hers could not figure out the answer on his own, then he must truly be very, very dull indeed.

"Why don't you answer?" his partner called

"It's because she's got all that metal between her teeth," Ridley said, his nose wrinkling up at he laughed at his own apparent genius. Talbot flicked the leather at Rosalind's cheek.

When she was touched, she jerked her head back, her eyebrows knitting as she gazed at the two boys in front of her. She didn't like being touched, let alone touched by these two who she wasn't familiar with or particularly fond of. She tried to push past them only to have her book snatched quickly from between her fingers. With a gasp of surprise and frustration, she turned swiftly to try and take it back. Talbot, however, held it out of her reach.

"C'mon! Ask for it!" he demanded.

No, she was not going to ask for it. It was common sense that people should not take other possessions. Her expression only darkened as he tried to reach for her book. He was very much taller than her, there was no mistaking that, and Rosalind tried to jump to get it only to have it dance out of her grasp by mere millimeters.

The boy sneered at her, "Why do you like reading these books anyway?"

She was getting more and more flustered, Talbot keeping it tauntingly just out of her reach. The more she tried, the more he grew angry that she wasn't answering his questions like every other child would when he asked them. She was so apt to correct him earlier, and now she was as silent as the grave.

"Answer me!" he said.

His friend chimed in as he observed, "Maybe there's too much metal in her mouth."

Talbot threw the book to the ground, "S'that so?"

Rosalind's eyebrows jumped up her forehead at the brutality of throwing a book to the ground, the dirt and grime of the alleyway seeping into its once white pages. It was animalistic and cruel. She hurriedly tried to snatch it up before it was completely ruined, but a set of hands against her shoulders and a harsh shove sent her tumbling to the ground. Her world shifted as she hit the pavement, the sound of a low pitched humming starting in her ears as she watched one of Talbot's shoes grind her book into the puddle it landed in.

"Stop!" she finally spoke. "You'll ruin it."

"Ill ruin what? No one cares about your books, silly moggy!"

Rosalind did not have time for this. The humming in her ears was growing louder as she, once more, tried to take up her book and simply leave before this situation got much worse. Talbot and his friend, however, wouldn't let her. She would to get up and they would push her back to the ground, the sooty dirt soaking into her knees and hip, small rocks pressed into her palms.

The humming was growing louder as she tried to not get angry, or scared, or panic. She hated when that useless feeling of terror gripped her late at night when the shadows turned into monsters, or when strange sounds came through her window. She hated that moment of cold numbness when she accidentally was locked in a closet once or when she was sent to the principal's office. She didn't want that feeling now even though it was quickly rising up within her, jockeying for space in her head next to her embarrassment and frustration.

"I said stop." She commanded again, the "s" sliding out the sides of her mouth.

The two boys did not. What started out as shoving soon grew harsher, and more violent. They hit her. The childish ridicule poured from their lips about her hair, her face, how ugly her dress was.

There came the feeling. Someone should hear them. Logically someone should come and stop them, perhaps she could wait it out long enough until then. She tried to rationalize with herself before the second boy whose name she did not care about managed to get a hold of her brace. His knuckles curled against her pale, thin cheek as he held on. With a sharp, almighty tug, it was snapped from her head. Rosalind grit her teeth and clamped her eyes shut as the two other children laughed at her. She held her hands over her head to protect it, for who knew when the blows landing on her would move up from her body to her most prized possession: her head.

As the pain hit, she couldn't help it. Panic over came her will and although she tried her best to cover her head, she tried to get away from the two boys as fast as she could, her fingers scraping against the ground.

"Don't let her go, she'll tell someone!" Who shouted that was of no concern to Rosalind as she managed to get her feet underneath her and push herself up. The humming in her ears was deafening, the clatter of her feet against the pavement seemed all but overwhelmed by it. The tears were starting to come up in her eyes and her breath was burning in her throat. She wasn't quite sure if she could out run them, but she was going to try. Having never been all that athletic, she only hoped that somehow, if she didn't out run them, which was very likely, someone else would help her. She could feel them right behind her it seemed as the humming grew to such a pitch in her head that she had to put her hands over her ears.

Suddenly there was a fleeting moment of bright light that, for an instant, she thought she might have been hit, but the terse burst of pain across her head. However, the sensation was gone in an instant…

… and so was the alley it seemed. When she opened her eyes, she was no longer staring at the brick walls of buildings, dirty by years of chimney smoke. She wasn't looking at the hanging lines of clothes and she wasn't hearing the rustle of horse carriages on the roads. The ground under her feet had changed from dirty cobblestones to long smooth paving cement. Even the buildings had changed from house lots directly next to each other to sprawling estates with rounded fronts and brightly colored paint works. Her running slowed to a stop. This was her street… but she wasn't on her street a few moments ago. She still had a ten minute travel time to return home. Where were Talbot and his friend? She took a moment to turn around and find no one pursuing her. Had she imagined that? Wiping her eyes against her sleeve, she quickly looked to her hands. They were dirty, that had happened… but…

How had she managed to travel all that distance in mere seconds?

What had happened?


End file.
